Laurence Michael Dillon (1915 - 1962) was a British physician and is most known as being the first trans man to undergo phalloplasty (creation of a penis). Throughout his life, he achieved medical and legal transition during a time period when it was very difficult to do so. In 1946, he wrote and published this book, Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology, to discuss the subject of what he described as "inversion"--later coined "transsexualism" in 1949.

Dillon argues that what we describe today as gender identity is innate, and cannot be changed with psychotherapy. He advocated for medical transition for patients who are transgender, saying, "Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body, the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind." His book connected him to Roberta Cowell, a transgender woman who was the first British woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. Though Dillon was not yet a licensed physician, he performed her orchiectomy (removal of the testes), as the operation was illegal under British law. (If you'll allow me some self-indulgent editorializing... AMAZING!)

After officially becoming a physician in 1951, Dillon worked as a naval surgeon at sea for private trading companies. Though he did not reveal his own gender history in Self, Dillon's aristocratic background raised questions about his inheritance and birth sex. He received unwanted press attention and moved to India, where he studied Tibetan Buddhism and later became a monk. Dillon also took on a new name, Lobzang Jivaka. As Jivaka, he published additional books about the religion, including biographies of some of its influential historical figures.

After Dillon's death in 1962, his brother wanted to burn Dillon's yet-unpublished autobiography. Thankfully, the autobiography was saved by Dillon's literary agent, and published in 2017 under the title Out of the Ordinary.